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Rivers of London Reading Order: How to read Ben Aaronovitch’s Series?

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Also known as The Peter Grant series, the Rivers of London series is written by English author Ben Aaronovitch. It’s composed of novels, short stories, audiobooks, and graphic novels (written by Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, and illustrated by Lee Sullivan).

This urban fantasy story is about Probationary Constable Peter Grant who, in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. His supernatural ability brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic. Now, Peter investigates crimes that take him into a world where gods and other supernatural creatures mingle with mortals.

How to Read the Rivers of London Series in Order?

The following list is about all the Rivers of London books in order, including short stories, graphic novels, and more. There are a lot of them, it some are missing, don’t hesitate to leave a comment, I’ll update the article asap.

  1. Nightingale: London 1966 (Short story) – Collected in Tales from the Folly.
  2. Action at a distance (graphic novel) – October 1957. A serial killer terrorizing the women of Cumbria has moved to the streets of London, with Constable Angus Strallen hot on his heels. But this murderer has special abilities, and Strallen soon realizes he needs the help of an old friend from the front lines who can match this madman’s power – London’s own wizarding police officer, Thomas Nightingale. As the pair move in closer, it quickly becomes clear that murder is not this man’s only intent.
  3. Rivers of London (also title Midnight Riot) – Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost.
  4. The Home Crowd Advantage (Short story) – Takes place during the Olympic Games in London, 2012.
  5. Tobias Winter – Meckenheim 2012 (Short story) – Collected in Tales from the Folly.
  6. Moon Over Soho – The song. That’s what Peter Grant first notices when he examines the corpse of Cyrus Wilkins, part-time jazz drummer and full-time accountant. The notes of the old jazz standard are rising from the body-a sure sign that something about the man’s death was not at all natural but instead supernatural.
  7. The Domestic (Short story)
  8. Whispers Under Ground – It begins with a dead body at the far end of Baker Street tube station, all that remains of American exchange student James Gallagher. With Inspector Nightingale tied up in the hunt for the rogue magician known as “the Faceless Man,” it’s up to Peter Grant to plumb the haunted depths of the oldest, largest, and deadliest subway system in the world.
  9. The Cockpit (Short story)
  1. Broken Homes – A mutilated body in Crawley. A killer on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil, possibly an associate of the twisted wizard known as the Faceless Man. Or maybe just a garden-variety serial killer. Before Peter Grant can even get his head ’round the case, two more are dropped in his lap.
  2. Body Work (graphic novel) – Peter Grant must immediately deal with two different cases. In one he must find what is possessing ordinary people and turning them into vicious killers, and in the second he must broker a peace between the two warring gods of the River Thames.
  3. Foxglove Summer – When two young girls go missing in rural Herefordshire, Peter Grant is sent out of London to check that nothing supernatural is involved. It’s purely routine-Nightingale thinks he’ll be done in less than a day. But Peter’s never been one to walk away from someone in trouble.
  1. What Abigail Did That Summer (a novella) – It is the summer of 2013 and Abigail Kamara has been left to her own devices. This might, by those who know her, be considered a mistake. While her cousin, police constable and apprentice wizard Peter Grant, is off in the sticks chasing unicorns, Abigail is chasing her own mystery. Teenagers around Hampstead Heath have been going missing but before the police can get fully engaged, the teens return home – unharmed but vague about where they’ve been.
  2. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Granny (Short Story)
  3. Night Witch (graphic novel) – Press-ganged into helping a Russian oligarch hunt his missing daughter, PC Peter Grant and his boss, Thomas Nightingale, find themselves caught up in a battle between Russian gunmen, a monstrous forest creature – and their nemesis: The Faceless Man. But as Grant and Nightingale close in on the missing girl, they discover that nothing about this case is what it seems!
  4. Black Mould (graphic novel) – Something dark and slimy is dripping through the walls of suburban London. Not the usual stuff that smells funny and can be hell on the lungs, this mould is possessed by some dark power full of bad intentions. Looks like it’s another case for PC Peter Grant and his reluctant partner, Sahra Guleed!
  5. King of The Rats (short story) – When a self-styled King of the Rats crashes a corporate do hosted by Fleet and Tyburn naturally the Folly are called in. Peter and Kumar have to determine whether his majesty is the legitimate ruler of the rat nation or a sad man with a rodent fixation.
  1. The Furthest Station (short story) – There have been ghosts on the London Underground. But now there’s a rash of sightings on the Metropolitan Line and these ghosts seem to be looking for something. PC Peter Grant with Jaget Kumar, his counterpart at the British Transport Police, must brave the terrifying crush of London’s rush hour to find the source of the ghosts.
  2. Detective Stories (graphic novel) – An anthology series of stories featuring PC Peter Grant, his partner, Sahra Guleed, and their associates, as they tackle supernatural crime on the streets of London.
  3. Reynolds – Florence, Az. 2014 (Short Story)
  4. Cry Fox (graphic novel) – Vengeful Russian mobsters are looking to hire members of London’s supernatural underworld to bring bloody retribution down on the witch Varvara. However, the ex-Soviet sorcerer is under the protective wing of London’s own wizarding cop, Peter Grant.
  1. Water Weed (graphic novel) – When two of the less well-behaved River goddesses, Chelsea and Olympia, decide to earn a few quid on the side, Peter Grant and Bev find themselves drawn into a sordid cannabis-smuggling operation, controlled by London’s new queenpin of crime – the brutal and beautiful Hoodette!
  2. The Hanging Tree – Suspicious deaths are not usually the concern of PC Peter Grant even when they happen at an exclusive party in one of the flats of the most expensive apartment blocks in London. But the daughter of Lady Ty, influential goddess of the Tyburn river, was there, and Peter owes Lady Ty a favor.
  3. A Rare Book of Cunning Device (short audiobook story) – Somewhere amongst the shadowy stacks and the many basements of the British library, something is very much amiss. Is it a ghost, or something much worse? PC Peter Grant really isn’t looking forward to finding out….
  4. The October Man – (a novella) When a man is found dead with his body impossibly covered in a fungal rot, the local authorities know they are out of their depth. But fortunately, this is Germany, where there are procedures for everything. Enter Tobias Winter, an investigator for the Abteilung KDA, the branch of the German Federal Criminal Police which handles the supernatural.
  5. Favorite Uncle (short story) – Also available in the Waterstones edition of Lies Sleeping.
  1. Lies Sleeping – Martin Chorley, aka the Faceless Man, wanted for multiple counts of murder, fraud and crimes against humanity, has been unmasked and is on the run. Peter Grant now plays a key role in an unprecedented joint operation to bring Chorley to justice.
  2. Three Rivers, Two Husbands and a Baby (short story)
  3. The Fey and the Furious (graphic novel) – Trouble never lies far from the race track. When a flash car belonging to a young boy racer from England washes up in the Netherlands with a bag load of unusual cargo, it’s evident there is more than meets the eye happening at street races held in an Essex car park. Enter Detective Inspector Peter Grant. Fresh from suspension, he takes to the track in his orange ‘asbo’ Ford Focus to try and infiltrate the big leagues. But Peter soon finds himself sucked back into an Otherworld – a real-life fairyland!
  4. False Value – Peter Grant is facing fatherhood, and an uncertain future, with equal amounts of panic and enthusiasm. Rather than sit around, he takes a job with émigré Silicon Valley tech genius Terrence Skinner’s brand new London start-up – the Serious Cybernetics Company. Drawn into the orbit of Old Street’s famous “silicon roundabout”, Peter must learn how to blend in with people who are both civilians and geekier than he is.
  5. Vanessa Sommer’s Other Christmas List (short story)
  1. Amongst Our Weapons – The London Silver Vaults-for well over a century, the largest collection of silver for sale in the world. It has more locks than the Bank of England and more cameras than a paparazzi convention. Not somewhere you can murder someone and vanish without a trace-only that’s what happened. The disappearing act, the reports of a blinding flash of light, and memory loss amongst the witnesses all make this a case for Detective Constable Peter Grant and the Special Assessment Unit.
  2. Monday, Monday (graphic novel) – What starts as a routine undercover operation to break up an organized teenage pickpocket gang turns into something far more dangerous when the Metropolitan police are confronted by a Swedish werewolf who’ll stop at nothing to avoid capture. Now it’s up to Peter and his cohort of chums to hunt the deadly lycanthrope and bring him to justice!
  3. Winter’s Gifts (novella) – When retired FBI Agent Patrick Henderson calls in an ‘X-Ray Sierra India’ incident, the operator doesn’t understand. He tells them to pass it up the chain till someone does. That person is FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds. Leaving Quantico for snowbound Northern Wisconsin, she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town – and there’s no sign of Henderson. Things soon go from weird to worse, as neighbours report unsettling sightings, key evidence goes missing, and the snow keeps rising – cutting off the town, with no way in or out… Something terrible is awakening. As the clues lead to the coldest of cold cases – a cursed expedition into the frozen wilderness – Reynolds follows a trail from the start of the American nightmare, to the horror that still lives on today…

  • Tales from the Folly – A collection of Short Stories collecting “The Home Crowd Advantage,” “The Domestic, The Cockpit,” “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Granny,” “King of The Rats,” “A Rare Book of Cunning Device,” “A Dedicated Follower of Fashion,” “Favourite Uncle,” “Vanessa Sommer’s Other Christmas List,” “Three Rivers, Two Husbands, and a Baby,” and “Moments One-Three”.

If you like our article about the Rivers of London books in order, don’t forget to bookmark it! If you like urban fantasy stories with wizards solving crimes, you should give a try to The Dresden Files.

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21 Comments

  1. How do I download the Audio Story? Do all of the Watersones ‘special Editions’ have a short story tagged on the end.I think I am missing some,and has the story about Kew been published yet?

  2. the audio story is available only from Audible. You can download it directly there or from Amazon (Audible is a 100% daughter of Amazon and uses the same password and user name as your Amazon account).
    You need to register a full or trial membership with Audible to download the audiobook. If you aren’t interested in other audiobooks, you can cancel your audible membership any time you like and may keep all the books you downloaded. Mind that a special software is required to play them as they have a copy protection.
    Unfortunately, that software isn’t available yet for linux users.

  3. Actually, the Home Crowd Advantage takes place after “Moon over Soho”. There’s a reference in the short story that peter has crashed an ambulance car. Which happens in the second novel.

  4. Quick Suggestion to remove the actual spoiler name of The Faceless Man from the description of Lies Sleeping? That nail-biter reveal was quite the literary scare reading in real-time and I wouldn’t want to steal the thrill from other readers!

  5. PS THANK YOU FOR THIS! It is an embarrassment of riches to have so many types of media supporting this glorious series and your list is very helpful what with the cross-referencing narratives among the various materials!

  6. How do you know which book to order in the graphic novels when you want the whole story in one book? I’m in New Zealand and can’t afford the postage on the piecemeal partworks.

  7. According to the Tales from the folly collection introduction to Favurite Uncle it states it takes place between the hanging tree and lies sleeping. Also you seem to not have the other “2 Moments” from the tales listed. You have Reynolds but not “London September 1966” and “Tobias Winter – Meckenheim 2012”

    1. Thanks for your comment, I had “Reynolds” twice for some reason! I add the two others. Have a good read.

  8. I have read all the novels, graphic novels and short stories but I missed the introduction of Foxglove. Where is she introduced and what’s her back story?

  9. Monday Monday was published out of order. It takes place after Amongst Our Weapons. This is clear because the children born in AOW are several months old in MM.

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